Random musings on whatever subject strikes my fancy that day.

In the wake of the Paris attacks, law enforcement officials everywhere are saying, into every microphone anyone will point at them, that they need backdoors into our encrypted communications. Because terror! Fear! They won’t mention this possibly relevant point: The terrorists did not even use encryption.

This just puts an exclamation point on the fact that these people are simply using fear of a recurrence of what just happened to do something they think will make their jobs easier. It won’t make their jobs any easier, but it will surely work against dissent and whistle-blowing. It will also make everyone less safe. There is no such thing as an encryption backdoor for law-enforcement that will not also provide easy access for criminals.